


not special

by CampionSayn



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Baatar Jr needs a hug, Gen, Huan is a good bro, Post-Canon, it's 2am and i have no shame, no beta we die like men, not Suyin friendly, tw: mention of offscreen suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-12-07 04:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18229979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: "You're boring."Through the entirety of Baatar's trial for his war crimes, his sentencing, imprisonment and first few months of serving his time...those words were the ones that kept playing through Huan's head. A memory of the last thing he said to his older brother before everything became tainted.





	not special

Sometimes Huan wondered if his mother really heard herself when she was talking.  
  
She expected too much without giving a thought to having to give anything back. Suyin had helped the Avatar protect the city  _(or made things worse, depending on how you looked at it)_  and had been more than happy to testify against Kuvira in her numerous crimes.  
  
Huan didn't like Kuvira, everyone knew this since she was just a foundling learning under his mother in Zaofu, but he still spent the week before the trial begging his mother not to say anything against her. Literally  _begging_  her.  
  
His mother thought he was being kind. His father was under the impression that Huan thought she deserved an unbiased trial. Wing, Wei and Opal thought maybe he just pitied her because of memories of once upon a time.  
  
Huan didn't give a shit about Kuvira. Her intentions had once been noble, stepping in when his mother simply refused the title of leader for the Earth Kingdom because she "didn't feel comfortable forcing her beliefs on the people" or whatever (years later and he still thought she was being selfish); but then Kuvira had become power mad and dangerous.  
  
*  
  
Suyin gave her testimony against Kuvira and Huan had to grit his teeth against the bile in his throat when she stepped down with a vindictive smile, not realizing that in crucifying The Great Uniter, she was also hammering the spikes into Junior's hands and feet.  
  
When the gavel came down and sentence was passed on Kuvira that she would be imprisoned for no less than twenty-five years and no more than seventy, Huan did the math in his head.   
  
Kuvira was the queen. The soldiers that stood behind her were the pawns. Baatar could be called her herald, her knight, or her right-hand.  
  
*  
  
Baatar would survive five to ten years.  
  
Huan had problems trying to resist bending a potted plant from a hanging over the courthouse and throwing it at his mother when he realized her whining at his brother's treatment and her assumptions of preferential treatment would follow him into the tombs, though.  
  
He didn't talk to anyone during the rest of their stay. Nor when they returned Opal to the Air Nomads and bid to see her later. Nor when they got home and began repairing the damage to Zaofu.  
  
Huan sequestered himself to the back entrance of the compound for a week, watching the people that had nothing to do with the Beifong go about their lives, and watched the sky burst and fade with color in turns.  
  
His muse and any urge he might have had to bend was silent in his grief.  
  
*  
  
The prison did not allow new prisoners to be visited during their first thirty days.  
  
Huan didn't try to fight the standards the people imposed fairly, not like his mother, not like his siblings.  
  
His father understood. Huan made due with going over everything that had happened; the years and witherings of their relationship and where everything went wrong.  
  
He huddled in the alcove of a tree along the river that went by Zaofu, surrounded by tall grass and the sound of the water gorged and fat with heavy rains and did his best to write a letter.  
  
That was allowed. Huan could live with that, since _Baatar_ would have to live with it.  
  
*  
  
_'You're not boring._  
  
_When mom was being dumb and Kuvira was leaving and you were trying to be something else than what dad and everyone else thought you were supposed to be, I saw the work you were doing. I saw your schematics for the robots that could have helped non-benders protect themselves and their homes in the Earth Kingdom; and the plans for adding to the police force barracks that would allow them to integrate other benders and non-benders into the ranks so they weren't stretched so thin. I heard your argument with mom and dad about at least lending aid to the Earth Kingdom civilians even if she didn't want the crown and how she told you to leave it, it was none of your affair._  
  
_You tried to talk about it with Wing and Wei...and me.... and they got bored and differed to mom's judgment. And I said you were being too politic and boring._  
  
_I didn't mean it.'_  
  
Smears and smudging along the ink, words crinkling with the scroll paper where indentations of fingerprints could be clearly made out.  
  
_'I was so scared of supporting your new choices. I thought we I would lose you..._  
  
_And it happened anyway.'_  
  
*  
  
Six months. Baatar didn't want to see anyone, the list of people he wrote down to be denied access long and almost all-encompassing.  
  
Su tried to convince Lin to talk to the guards, the facility managers, the warden; convince them that her eldest wasn't thinking straight and his family should be allowed to see him, remind him that he wasn't alone in the world. That even if he didn't have Kuvira anymore, he still had them.  
  
Pining for Kuvira... Huan wanted to spit bile and kick something.   
  
That ship had sailed and, he was sure, had never really been the point.   
  
Baatar had clung to her, certainly, like a drowning man clings to a raft in a raging sea, even if the raft is a piece of wood torn apart from a ship, sharp splinters digging into skin and causing blood and pain. A drowning man won't complain if he knows he had no other option.  
  
He sent his aunt a package full of fresh, aromatic coffee beans when Lin turned Su down.  
  
*  
  
He remained always on the outskirts of Zaofu, preferably out of sight of both mother and father, and it served him well when Huan finally received an answer to his message.  
  
The courier from the prison was a little wary when Huan bended the earth to stop him from entering the Beifong property where the new guards would see him, but Huan could actually bullshit his way through charm and wheedling when he wanted something as much as he wanted his privacy and secrets kept.  
  
After all, if Suyin found out Baatar was actually willing to talk to one of them, she'd dig her heels in and demand something of Huan that he knew would be petty, selfish and something most assuredly  _not_  in Baatar's best interest.  
  
She still didn't understand that they were in the wrong. They were all still calling him Junior, after all.  
  
*  
  
_'Is it wrong that I just wanted to get away? I just wanted to be somewhere else, without the clothing that marked me as a member of the select that could live in that city and without that metal ornamentation that was no better than an obscenely fancy collar?_  
  
_Maybe I shouldn't have just jumped at the first bit of attention given to me by someone that wasn't my family. I knew know Kuvira is obsessive, and she might have held affection at some point, but she was using me and I'm so fucking stupid--'_  
  
The paper tore and shredded, trailing off with the ink in what Huan was sure would be more self-deprecation and despair.  
  
He didn't linger and moved onto the continued piece a good six inches downwards.  
  
_'I'm sorry I yelled at dad and I'm sorry I put you both in a cell when I know you can't stand being away from the ground. I was just so, so angry and I know I shouldn't make excuses--there are no excuses when you put your blood in a wooden prison hanging precariously above lava, after all--'_  
  
It stopped there and Huan wondered if Baatar had to force himself to send even this much.  
  
*  
  
Sometimes Huan hated Opal, even though it was a blessing from the spirits that she was a bender with the Nomads, an honor unexpected and suitable to someone so gentle and good that could help lead the new colonies into prosperity.  
  
She was bullied so much when they were all younger for not being a bender, and had relied so much on Baatar, though. He'd been so supportive and taken so much humiliation on her behalf.  
  
And then she'd just  _left_  with Tenzin and the others and had the  _gall_  to be so superior in her beliefs that Baatar had been in the wrong to leave the family and Zaofu and their father's shadow.  
  
How dare she, how dare she, how dare she...  
  
He removed himself from the house whenever the nomads visited, excuses of being busy with a project coming readily and easily and it wasn't like it really mattered when Opal was busy flirting endlessly with Kai.  
  
It wasn't like it mattered that he wasn't lying, either.  
  
*  
  
The prison had it written that Baatar's medical updates were to be sent to Huan, and the mail carrier had realized that it was to be private and so Huan tipped him when the man took time out of his usual schedule to track the artist down away from prying eyes.  
  
_'Please register an appointment with the medical staff at the swiftest convenience, as the prisoner has refused to give information on his medical history, allergies and sensitivity to narcotics.'_  
  
Well, that wasn't good.  
  
*  
  
"Spirits on a crutch, Baatar, how much weight have you lost?"  
  
"Not nearly enough if I still can't get away from the other inmates, it would seem."  
  
"You have--had some muscle; why the hell not just defend yourself? Knock someone's ass in the dirt and they usually steer clear, right?"  
  
"That worked when we were kids, Huan, but it's a little different now."  
  
Clearly. Sunken eyes, longer hair, still some muscle, but the man had lost at least twenty pounds since his trial. Bruises and cuts where Huan could see and infinite more beneath the bandages, which was why Huan had been called in by the head of medical staff to answer questions and talk sense into his brother.  
  
Not like Huan could ever get Baatar to do anything unless it was something he already wanted. He'd have a better chance at herding Southern Water Sea-foxes.  
  
He'd settle in just getting Baatar's permission to hide in his old room when their parents were being annoying and see if he could get him to eat the not-especially-good pie he'd bought in town.  
  
*  
  
Kuvira doesn't even make it to her three hundredth day in prison.  
  
The guards that gave her food three times a day in her third month of solitary found her with a placid smile on her face, wrists mauled by her own teeth and throat full of her own blood and flesh.  
  
The common people of the Earth Kingdom held a public ceremony that a great many people of the higher class, most benders and authority figures find ridiculous and distasteful.   
  
The Avatar and her girlfriend made sure Kuvira is given a proper burial, with her friends and almost all of the Beifong in attendance, despite most of them not fully knowing how to feel and flickering between grim satisfaction and honest pity spliced with grief.  
  
Huan visited Baatar and both agreed on one thing, "Well, that was fast."  
  
They were not surprised, nor especially remorseful; Baatar seemed like he knew it was coming and Huan had a suspicion when he heard about the solitary confinement when usually the woman was so on point with behaving better than every other prisoner.  
  
*  
  
Baatar continued to lose weight, grow his hair and try to become accustomed to his lot in life.  
  
Huan started looking over every last one of the old plans and designs his brother left behind.  
  
*  
  
Wood working was something Huan had to become familiar with when he got permission to try and have a go at one of the more noble and easiest looking designs from his brother. All of the siblings were aware and knowing of the earth in all its forms, even learning about air when Opal changed, their parents encouraging them to follow the trail of knowledge that would help them grow as people.  
  
But Baatar seemed to be drawn to wood. All of his preferences in his beginning to become an engineer marked with figuring out how to configure a thing out of what once had been living trees before moving onto iron and steel.  
  
It made little sense until he realized that wood--trees, actually--was a thing everyone had access to and seemed to be the only thing non-benders had monopoly over.  
  
And no wonder.   
  
Bending was an inherent and instinctual thing that every bender everywhere knew how to control and do the longer they lived; crafting, carving, building, laboring, designing, controlling, selling, breeding hybrids--using wood at all... this was something that had to be taught and learned through time and hard work.  
  
Seemed like a nearly perfect metaphor for Baatar's life, really.  
  
*  
  
He moved out of Zaofu and into Earth Kingdom proper with as much fanfare as he supposed was going to happen no matter how he played his cards.  
  
The emu-pony he’d bought to carry his meager belongings and himself seemed just as annoyed as he was, passing by people he knew from a distance and complete strangers at a steady stride with both mother and father stalking behind him.  
  
“This is a mistake, Huan, you’re making a mistake!”  
  
“Huan, please, what will it take for you to stay? Surely you have a reason for up and leaving like this and we can get it for you! Just—just stay here, with the family.”  
  
Wing and Wei were at least smart enough not to follow him down the hill shouting uselessly at his back, begging pathetically and just generally being embarrassing assholes who couldn’t take a hint like their parents.  
  
“For the last time: I’m a grown ass man, I am suffocating and my individuality will always be in danger while in this city and under your roof. I love you, but I need a change.”  
  
He gently knocked his heels against the beast and took off before they could reply.  
  
He consoled himself in that his final words to them for a while weren’t lies given just to make them feel better about themselves or said out of pure spite.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hands so rough and cut up. And you look bigger than the last I saw you.”  
  
The designs Baatar had begun years ago lay before the both of them at the table afforded by the prison in one of the visiting rooms, a slice of pie for each of them that Huan had baked as well as he could manage and brought in with much chagrin at the guards having to pick at it with a clean spoon to make sure he wasn’t trying to smuggle his brother drugs or weapons. The soft chalk for their updating the layout was held aloft in Baatar’s less damaged hand, his right hand, which he favored, bound up in white tape with the checkers of blood flecks visible underneath.  
  
Huan tried not to let his smug smile show when Baatar hummed in appreciation of his baking, his own piece whittling down slowly as Huan had already eaten a whole one the other night over tea with his new landlady while he worked on crafting pottery and sculptures that allowed him to make a living and eat while attempting to assist the district he’d moved into with Baatar’s bridge.  
  
They both agreed that it would help with the trade, which meant it would help the people of the poorer districts as a whole, which meant that—fundamentally—Baatar was going to accomplish what he set out to do, even if it had to be through Huan because of that fellow feeling they shared in view of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> A little something from the korra fandom I don't fully remember writing??


End file.
